


i can feel the flames on my skin

by deanorus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hedric, M/M, Quidditch, au where cedric never died, like it should have gone ., pro quidditch au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-25 13:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanorus/pseuds/deanorus
Summary: When the war is over, Harry has no prospectives and a lot less money.  What he doesn't expect is an unexpcted owl to change the course of the rest of his life.or, the one where cedric survives and all was well. in a sense.





	1. Chapter 1

There was something about the wind both rushing through his ears and blowing his hair in and out of his face that made Harry feel truly alive. The game for him didn’t start when it started for everyone else. While the keepers, the beaters and the chasers started the sound the whistle sounded, for a seeker your game only started when you saw that flash of gold and the flutter of it’s wings out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes it was almost immediate, the quaffle had barely changed hands when it flew past you to the edge of the pitch. Sometimes it was halfway through the match, you were starting to question entirely if it was even going to surface, and then you see it just past the goals and angle down to reach it first. For the seeker, you could never plan your game, you just had to simply hope. 

Hope was a hard thing for anyone to have when they’d been wanted dead since they were a baby.

Harry mustered as much enjoyment as he could from everything. Knowing from such a young age that there were people, more so the fact that they were wizards, wanted you dead to fulfill a prophecy allowing them complete power, was harrowing. But it was his life, eleven years old the first time he found out his life could be cut short at any time. It really changes the way you look at life. 

Cedric lead a very different life. 

Born to loving parents who didn’t die when he was a year old, growing up in the wizarding world rather than a muggle world surrounded by people who you know as family but that treat you as gum on the bottom of a shoe, and being able to call people friends from a much younger age. He wasn’t wanted dead, suffered no abuse and was flying brooms for as long as he could remember. 

Cedric was a person full of dreams, full of hope for the future. Harry never made plans just in case he was gone before he could get there. 

But it was only a matter of time before Harry’s life started looking up, and Cedric’s started looking down. It was weird, how a war changed their lives forever, yet in completely different ways. Harry filled with hope for the first time in his life, knowing he was safe now. He would be staying alive, all threats gone. While Cedric had his life crumble in front of him, now dealing with the harsh aftermath of a war that took over the entire wizarding world, the world he called his true home. 

They were friends, or something of the type. They’d greet each other in the halls, were friendly on the quidditch pitch, and both knew the other was always there if they needed help. Neither of them took the other up on that, for vastly different reasons. But after the war, they didn’t speak. It was hard to stay the same person and lead the same life when half the people you loved were dead, and your school destroyed. 

Harry was used to loss, really. Cedric was a complete stranger. 

\-------------

Harry knew his life was truly starting fresh for him when he got the owl with the offer. He knew that not finishing his wizarding education, that a good job might be harder to come by. Teaching was off the cards, you couldn’t really go and teach a subject you stopped learning before full completion. The brief dream of becoming an auror was crossed out too, you needed the grades for that. And to not have been regarded as a troublemaker, he assumed. Harry had tried to once make a list of possible job and career prospects for a Hogwarts dropout who inadvertently started the Second Wizarding War, but he simply drew up blanks. 

Quidditch, while something he enjoyed while he was still able to be part of a team, had never crossed his mind as an option until he got the letter. 

“Dear Mr.Potter,” it read. “On behalf of the Chudley Cannons, we are delighted to be extending this offer. Due to the unexpected retirement of our previous seeker, we have an opening that must be filled as soon as possible, and your name came up many times within the discussions of who would be a good fit. We have all heard of your passion when playing, and of course your game stats, irregardless of the other involved circumstances. Please send your response back with this owl, we look forward to hearing from you.”

There was a name, a position within the club and the teams logo beneath the overall letter, but he couldn’t believe what he was reading. His best friends team, offering him the job of a lifetime. A way to get back into the sport he held so dear. It was as if someone had called in a miracle, someone had his back and was finally letting him be happy. Naturally, he grabbed the closest parchment and quill to him and scribbled out an acceptance. Attaching it to the owls leg and gesturing it to fly back to the original sender, he settled back into his living room chair. 

Maybe his life wouldn’t always be so bad, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd like always !!
> 
> honestly this update is just boring world building and the next one will be much better !!

The trip to Chudley would have been long if Harry hadn’t managed to pass and be allowed to apparate. Still not a fan of floo powder after his first time, and hesitant to get on a broom anywhere that wasn’t a pitch, or acting as one, it was this or find a train timetable and stare out the window for hours. Not to mention his relationship with trains was also a complicated one. 

“Harry Potter,” he mumbled to himself. “The boy who lived, scared of trains and floo. An absolute joke, that is.” 

He flung his bag over his shoulder, glancing around to make sure he hadn’t left anything lying around that he’d need, and within seconds there was the loud **CRACK!** that alerted others to the apparition in or out. No one around him would even recognize that sound, he’d taken up in a muggle village where no one would stare at him, or whisper. 

Ragmar Dorkins was there to meet him, hands outstretched and grin coming across his face. Harry knew him as the team manager from the letter with the offer, and only knew his face from the Prophet. 

“Potter!” He beamed, his voice traveling across the courtyard to where Harry was still standing. “We are so glad you could join us, just follow me.” Harry nodded in agreement, and followed the graying man to a large room, his guess would be on what muggles would call a conference room.

He was shitting himself a little bit, to be honest. 

Leaving his bag in the corner of the room, he took a seat at the side of the table in the middle of the room. Ragmar sat across from him, hands flat on the top of the table. 

“I’m going to invite the rest of the team in, if you don’t mind. Just a quick meeting, and a cover of all bases and questions from everyone before official training for this season starts. Communication between players is the most important, after all. If you can’t speak freely with your team, games are lost.”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine. Bring them all in.” Harry pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and tucked loose hair behind his ears. It was a shame he was still able to feel nerves completely take over. 

The rest of the Cannons filed in, taking seats around the table. No one did a double take upon seeing Harry there, and he was thankful they at least knew he would be there. Harry had a dislike for that snap of the neck as they looked back to see if it really was him they’d walked past, or sat near. 

There’d been a full team overhaul, almost. The team heads saw the scores were bad and only getting worse, and called for new team members to hopefully bring up morale and bring in wins. The keeper and one chaser stayed, while everyone else was new. They’d intended on keeping their seeker too, but she decided on a career switch last minute. That was the only reason they’d been been able to extend the offer to Harry, really. 

It was a long meeting, questions coming from every direction which included from Harry. Everything from “When exactly are we training, what does the schedule look like?” to “Does Potter get more money than us because he’s a celebrity?” and didn’t end until everyone had run out of questions. They were in agreement, despite the doubt that seemed to appear in their questions. Harry would be good for the team, the best athletes were those who knew what they had to lose.

And Harry, well he’d lost everything more times than any person could. 

The team weren’t forced to share living quarters like you do in school houses, instead the only ask is that you actually do live in the town your team resides, so Harry found himself renting a small house from the family of someone he vaguely remembered from Hogwarts. The connections he made still came in handy those years later. It had been three years since the battle, three years of finding where he could belong, and people still had his back if he asked.

It was nice to know, actually. That not everyone hated him for the losses.

There were no rules, no clause in the contract that he and anyone else on the team couldn’t speak to the press about Harry joining the team. They were all allowed, but no one wanted to be the person to accidentally invite cameras to their training sessions. Everyone knew, even those who came from other countries, just how fast people would flock to see the chosen one again. 

A con of living under the radar, if you will. When they get word that you’re back on the radar, it’s _all_ over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my twitter is gantaiigarashi and tumblr is diggorye if u want to be my friend ! i'm on a slight anime kick no one mention it

**Author's Note:**

> this is unbeta'd because i'm impulse posting after thinking about this idea for two years. updates aren't on a schedule they're just when i decide the next chapter is good enough i'm really SORRY
> 
> my twitter is gonegirlmonolog and my tumblr is diggorye if u wanna be my friend !!


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